First things first, this thread makes heavy reference to storyline that is revealed in the latest "Star Trek: Destiny" series of books.

Given that the timeline updates that we have recieved from Cryptic so far have made heavy reference to official books, I believe that the following events that I am about to post will be revealed in the next couple of timeline updates and will ultimatly be the basis for an era of instability and conflict in Star Trek Online.

Do not read further if you plan to purchase and read "Star Trek: Destiny"

That said, even after reading the following, its still well worth reading these books as I am effectively condensing 1500 pages of storyline into one post.

















Spoilers Below









Spoilers Below











Star Trek Destiny takes place in three main time-periods so i'm going to break it down as best I can

Present (2374/2375)
The Borg launch a full scale attack on the alpha quadrant. 

They send 7000 cubes into the alpha quadrant via some kind of subspace tunnels that are discovered in the Azure Nebula.

These cubes proceed to fan out in all directions and launch attacks on the federation, Romulans, Klingons, and dozens of other non aligned powers.

Facing such insurmountable odds and what they think is "the end", Starfleet dispenses the schematics for the Transphasic torpedo to all ships everywhere in an attempt to fight of the Borg.

Allied forces across the galaxy are able to destroy around 3000 cubes before the Borg adapt to the torpedo and become truly unstoppable.

2156

Erica Hernandez and the Crew of the NX02 engage in Battle with Romulan forces just prior to the Start of the Romulan War.  They are crippled and are forced to travel at Relativistic speeds to the closest starsystem where they discover a highly advanced race called the Caelier.

The Caelier are extremely private and xenophobic and the crew of Columbia are made "mandatory guests" for the rest of their natural lifes, as the Caelier do not want the humans to tell Starfleet about them.  If this were to happen, they would be forced to "displace" the entire human population into another dimension/galaxy/whatever.

The Caelier are so advanced, that they shed their physical existence long ago and became part of a collective consciousness, however they can manifest as physical beings via "catoms" - a highly advanced form of Nanotechnology.

The crew of the NX02, in an attempt to escape, detonate charges in the power core of one of the Caelier's cities, which we later learn is powered by Omega.

98% of the Caelier population is destroyed in the ensuing destrcution, but 4 city-ships and around 100 million Caelier manage to escape via subspace tunnels, however the subspace tunnels are highly unstable and as well as tunneling through space, they tunnel through time.

1 city ends up in the 16th century, Erica Hernandez is the one of only a handful of human survivor and is on this city-ship.

Another city ends up in the gamma quadrant along with NX02 and a third city ends up in the Delta Quadrant at around 4000 bc

4000bc - Location: Delta Quadrant
The city that ends up in the delta quadrant, has 4 Caelier survivors and 4 human survivors. They have landed on a planet in its arctic zone.  The city ship is all but destroyed and the Caelier loose the power source which powers their city and their "Catoms".

The caelier want to "merge" with the humans in a form of symbiosis which will give the humans better resistance to the elements, etc and will give the Caelier a source of bio-electric power.

The humans resist, and at first the caelier respect this decision, but as their "catoms" loose power, they become increasingly desperate and hallucinogenic and eventually also loose their memory. 

They end up forcing themselves on the Humans and thus become half biological half machine....cyborgs.

They are eventually discovered by the planets natural inhabitants and they assimilate and grow.   Thus, the origins of the Borg

Back in the 16th Century....
The Human survivors including Hernandez spend the rest of their lives with the Caelier survivors. Damage to this city ship is minimal.  80 years later, Erica hernandez is on her death bed however at the last moment, the Caelier intervene and with her consent, infuse "Catoms" into her system which allow her repair her old age and allow her to live indefinatly.  She becomes a reluctant part of their society as it rebuilds.

The eventually settle on another planet and spend the next 800 years doing relativly little, until they "catch up" to their original time. (2156).

Back to the Current Timeline (2364/65)
The USS Titan on deep exploration mission discovers the Caelier and beam down to the planet where they are greeted by Erica Hernandez.   The Caelier take the Titan prisoner in the same fashion as they did with the NX02, however they eventually escape with Hernandez help, and she instantly transports the Titan to the Azure Nebula, which we learn is what is left of the original Caelier homeworld.

Aboard the Titan, Erica learns all about the Borg, and she recognizes that Borg Nanoprobes are almost identical to Caelier "Catoms".    She relays this information to the Caelier who are horrified but initially want to sit back and do nothing, however Erica convinces them to intervene.

She infiltrates a Borg ship and allows herself to be assimilated, but the Catoms are stronger than nanoprobes, and the Caelier basically use their Collective consciousness via Erica  to hack into the Collective, and free EVERY single drone, everywhere.

Then they impose their "gestalt" (collective consciousness) on all of these former drones, and they become part of the Caelier.

All Borg ships transform into pure energy and the Caelier vanish back into hiding.   This is the end of the Borg.........Period.

Almost 50% of all Allied and Non Aligned Ship power in the Alpha and Beta Quadrant is lost before the Borg cease to exist, almost 100 BILLION lives are extinguished.

The Romulan States, Klingon Empires and Federation are all decimated and estimates state that it will take a century to rebuild the numerous planets and ships that were lost.

The economy is left in chaos and the Alpha and Beta quadrants have never been weaker.


If Cryptic keep following the storyline put forth in the books, then this is what we have to come in the next time line updates and this is the state of the universe that we can expect in Star Trek Online.

If you want more information on this storyline, I recommend you purchase the Destiny series of books below.  I have tried to condense the keypoints of 1500 pages of story into this point, so anyone reading this should definitely buy these books.

1) http://books.simonandschuster.com/Star-Trek-Destiny-Gods-of-Night/David-Mack/Star-Trek-All/9781416551713

2) http://books.simonandschuster.com/Star-Trek-Destiny-Mere-Mortals/David-Mack/Star-Trek-All/9781416551720

3) http://books.simonandschuster.com/Star-Trek-Destiny-Lost-Souls/David-Mack/Star-Trek-All/9781416551751

Comments folks?

This is an interesting Synopsis Zach and based on what we know already its pretty easy to imagine the story for STO going in that direction....however I still hold to the opinion that the Klingon's while they will be another faction, the Federation will not necessarily be there enemies

uh.. I'm sorry but I don't see the connection between the STO timeline and what you described... The Borg destroyed? What about the borg cubes we saw in the trailer? :s

Yeah, destruction of the Borg in it's entirety is a bit far fetched.... ok, extremely far fetched. I just don't buy it. Kinda like The Replicators being fully destroyed, or Apophis is really dead this time...

I could see the destruction of all the cubes that came to attack, but some remenant of the Borg would remain, somewhere, somehow. They are resilient buggers you know!

borg totally destroyed? probably not, even though i was no biug fan of the overuse of them, the Borg "Queen" really made sense to me.

first off, there's no way trillions of minds could have been constantly communicating with each other without causing some sort of overload. besides, why would a droneon X cube need to know a control node on deck 27 section 45 of Cube Z across the galaxy was down?

the way I envision the Queens ( i use pluaral because as you'll see it makes more sense) were like a router in a modern network, she controled he flow of the ship or ships under here, only relayed the quirky things to those that needed to know it under her. (we see this a bit in the Voyager episode about uniumatrix 1, there seemed to be some time delyas on information getting to her).

The Queens, would talk amongst themselves, relaying pertainent information, however, even with millions of queens, the sytem could still get overloaded, so I suggest that there were a core set of "Lords" that governed and directed the overall strategic path of the Borg (this woulf fit in with the books, as those initial 4 could be the core Lords) andwere buffers on information exchanges between the queen.

we see evidence that this might be the case, as the Borg were on several ocassions asked a question or in the case of Voyager offered a solution to a problem. There was always a long pause before giving an answer, as if hey were communicating up a chain to a set core that thn gave the apporpriate response.

I still belive the Borg collective is more of a Star Node sustem than a Ring Node System.

however, not all the borg could be accounted for in Zach's scenerio, some were in fluidic (sp?) space, other had ventured deep outside borg territories pastthe galactic edge, and some were evenin the Gamma quadrant. so even if they were all found in the alpha, beta and delta quadrants, some would have persistated and may rebuilt.

that being said, i do like Zach's extrapolation of the creation of the borg better than trying o pawn off that VGer was the creator of the borg (which if you read TMP book that came out with the movie, you'd see the falacy of that as the book says VGer was slung to a far away galaxy and landed on a machine world there). really not keen on e NX-02 aspect, but it's a better explination. i just belive they were a normal race that experimented with cybernetics and it went to far.

Wow .. that .. uhm ... sucks.

I would have rolled my eyes and thrown the books away like that.

I miss the old books (can't get them where I live anymore)

I'm waiting to see how they flesh the Klingon/Gorn out.